There’s something wonderful about Christmas medleys. The songs are all familiar, and you can silently sing the words along with the orchestra or the chorus…but it’s also fun listening to how a medley gets put together and how the composer

Everyone approaches the winter holidays differently: some people feel excitement, while others feel dread. It can be a season of celebration, crushing loneliness, and everything in between. The great composers also experienced a wide variety of Christmas celebrations. Today, we’re

Christmas is always an emotionally charged time of year. It can be everything from a season of hearty celebration to crushing loneliness. Today, we’re looking at five emotional, memorable Christmases from the lives of the great composers: Wagner, Chopin, Tchaikovsky,

For choral musicians, Christmas is an especially joyous time, as it is filled with the warmth of singing beloved carols and sacred works that celebrate the spirit of the season. That shared experience of harmonising in festive concerts creates a

In our last article about Maurice Ravel (Read “Maurice Ravel at the Turn of the Century”), we left off shortly after the resolution of the affaire Ravel, the controversy surrounding Ravel’s exclusion by the judges of the Prix de Rome

For many of us, we think of Spring as the start of the seasons – Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter – saving the cold for the end. For Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946), who started thinking about the shape of

Manuel Blancafort (1897-1987) had the ideal exposure to the world via his parents’ hotel, located in the spa town of La Garriga, near Barcelona. Artists, intellectuals, and politicians all came to the resort. Another influence was unexpected. In addition to

Given how often composers travel for work, it’s not surprising that many of them have gotten into accidents. Some of these accidents could easily have killed the composers in question. Others led to disastrous health spirals that did end up